I’m looking forward to these lectures. Hugh Nibley catapulted LDS scholarship and apologetics into a new dimension, and his work will affect many generations of Latter-day Saints to come. His work on the temple has particularly influenced me, and many others I know.

Update 1/15/10: The lecture was wonderful last night. And there’s good news! There were three cameras there filming it, which I think they will continue for the series, which means that they are planning on putting it all on TV or making it available somehow for later viewing (perhaps online). They also gave the rest of the series schedule of lectures:

14 Jan – “Nibley and Joseph Smith” – Richard Bushman

21 Jan – “Nibley and the Church” – Robert Millet

28 Jan – “Nibley’s Early Education” – Zina Petersen

4 Feb – “Nibley as Apologist” – Daniel Peterson

11 Feb – “Nibley and the environment” – Terry Ball

18 Feb – “Graduate School through BYU” – Alex Nibley

25 Feb – “Nibley on the Bible” – Ann Madsen

4 Mar – “Folklore on Nibley” – Bert Wilson

11 Mar – “The Lasting Legacies of Hugh W. Nibley” – John W. Welch

18 Mar – “Nibley and Classical Scholarship” – Eric Huntsman

25 Mar – “Nibley on the Book of Mormon” – Marilyn Arnold

1 Apr – “Nibley the Mentor” – Wilfred Griggs

8 Apr – “Nibley, Egyptology & the Book of Abraham” – TBA

These lectures will all be held in the Harold B. Lee Library Auditorium (Level 1) at 7:00pm. This is a great lineup! If you plan on coming to these lectures, make sure you come early to get a seat, as the room was filled to overflowing last night.

The temple is like a great lens. It’s a reflector and a magnifier, a redirector and a viewer. Many have said how attending the temple allows us to leave the world around us and enter a different sphere. It is a place where time and fashion disappear. It is the nearest to God that we can come on earth, but how much nearer can you come when you are in His house?

As such, the temple allows us to redirect our attention and refocus our lives on those things that really matter. If we attend the temple often enough, the things we learn there will spill over into our daily comings and goings.

Sometimes we get too caught up in the world to notice those things that are the most worthwhile. We get so preoccupied by satisfying the world that we forget that we ultimately need to satisfy God. In the October 2000 Conference, Elder Neal A. Maxwell taught,

Elder Neal A. Maxwell

Many individuals preoccupied by the cares of the world are not necessarily in transgression. But they certainly are in diversion and thus waste “the days of [their] probation” (2 Ne. 9:27). Yet some proudly live “without God in the world” (Alma 41:11), with gates and doors locked from the inside! . . . Let us adopt the attitude recommended by President Brigham Young: “Say to the fields, . . . flocks, . . . herds, . . . gold, . . . silver, . . . goods, . . . chattels, . . . tenements, . . . possessions, and to all the world, stand aside; get away from my thoughts, for I am going up to worship the Lord” (Deseret News, 5 Jan. 1854, 2). There are so many ways to say to the world, “stand aside.” (“The Tugs and Pulls of the World“)

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This blog is dedicated to the exemplary LDS (Mormon) scholar Dr. Hugh Nibley, whose landmark temple studies have strengthened the faith of many. Read more on About page. Email me. Click on the widget in the lower-right corner of the window to chat with me.